I slowly attempt to stand. My legs are wobbly, but I manage to get to my feet. I reach up until I touch a smooth surface, which I estimate at about seven feet high. I put my arms in front of me and take a few tentative steps before touching a glass wall. I follow it sideways a few steps until I feel the intersection of another glass wall. I follow the surface the entire length of the rectangle and realize I’m in a glass cage, approximately eight feet wide and fourteen feet long. I wonder if Rachel is in a similar cage. Wherever she is, she doesn’t deserve this shit.
Suddenly, a light comes on and then more lights. Lots of incredibly bright lights are coming on above and around me in all directions. The sudden brightness is too much for my eyes. Though I’m desperate to see what’s happening, I have to shield my eyes for more than a minute before they can adjust. While I manage a few short peeks, all I gain is watery eyes and only the blurriest information.
I allow enough time for my vision to acclimate. I blink a couple of times to finally bring the world around me into focus. I wipe the remaining tears from my eyes with the tail of my shirt and see that the walls of my cage are not made of glass, but rather a thick slab of Lucite. Beyond the walls that hold me captive, I see that my Lucite enclosure sits in the middle of a huge, empty room that looks like an indoor parking lot. The bottom of my enclosure is made of wood and metal and is elevated several feet above the parking lot’s concrete floor. I try to see what’s holding up my cage, but I can’t find any angle that allows me to glimpse the structure beneath me. But wait, I turn to one side and look through the clear material. I see something that takes me by surprise: the giant cab of a truck, the kind of cab used to haul large flatbed trucks across the country.
My Lucite container is attached to one … only, in this case, I’m the cargo.
I turn my attention to the area inside my cage and find a camper toilet, an insulated cooler, a blanket, and a pillow. There’s one more item, located on top of the cooler: a laptop computer.
I appear to be alone in this giant underground parking lot. I’m assuming “underground,” because there are no windows and no natural light, and moments ago, the room was so dark it seems impossible it could be located above ground.
My inner voice says,
“Monitor me for what?” I ask myself.
“No,” I tell myself. “Wherever they would have put me, Creed would have found me in less than ten days. I’m still holding the device. He’s coming for me. He’ll get us out of here.”
I look at my watch again. Three hours have passed, and it’s now April 2, 2008. I watch the hours, minutes, and calendar going forward and backward randomly through time. Every few seconds, my watch resets to a different date and time, none of which hold any significance that I can determine.
I shout, “You people are nuts! Just tell me what you want and let us go!”
Across the parking lot, I see a huge garage-type door start to rise. When it gets to full height, the cab of a large truck enters. As it continues through the door, I can see that the bed of the truck is made of Lucite and has the same dimensions as my cage, which confirms everything I suspect about what’s beneath my cage.
I’m trapped in a Lucite container attached to a flatbed truck.
The other truck pulls up alongside mine and stops maybe twelve feet away. The windows and windshield of the truck’s cab are mirrored, so there’s no way to tell who’s driving it. I concentrate on the part I can see. I’m staring at a Lucite cage just like mine, equipped just like mine, except that it has no laptop that I can see. In the cage across from me, the blanket is covering what appears to be a body. I bang my fist against the transparent wall that holds me captive and shout, “Rachel!”
I bang the Lucite wall again and continue to shout her name, but I already know these units are completely soundproofed because the huge truck across from me entered the room and stopped a few feet away from me and I never heard the slightest sound as it did so.
I scream my wife’s name again and again. I kick the wall in frustration. I pick up the cooler and smash it against the wall, but it rebounds like a rubber hammer hitting a concrete wall. Several water bottles and wrapped sandwiches fly out and scatter across the floor of my cage. I stand with my palms pressed against the Lucite wall and stare at the motionless form under the blanket for what seems like an hour.
Could they have killed her? Beaten her to death? Have I lost the love of my life because of a stupid computer program?
Then I think I see the slightest movement. Are my eyes playing a trick on me? No—there it is again. She’s alive! Thank God! It’s destroying me to think about seeing Rachel like this, but I need to see her, need to reassure her, need to let her know how sorry I am to have caused all this to happen. The blanket finally pushes away, and I can see it’s not Rachel who’s trapped in the cage twelve feet away from me. My heart sinks. It’s Donovan Creed.
Chapter 20
A voice comes through a hidden speaker in the floor of my cubicle.
“Mr. Case, I believe you already know the man in the unit before you. His name is Donovan Creed. Mr. Creed is a former CIA assassin and currently works for the Department of Homeland Security as a clandestine terrorist assassin. He tests crowd control weapons for the United States Army and performs freelance contract killing for various people, including a regional underworld crime boss.”
The voice goes silent. I look at Creed hopefully, but he’s offering no expression to encourage me. I wonder if his cubical is getting the sound. I turn my palms upward in the universal gesture, “What’s going on?”
Creed shrugs.
“That’s it?” I scream. “You
Creed appears disinterested. He looks away, walks over to his toilet, and starts peeing.
